Covid-19 miscellany

[none]

engrish?

Yes, they talked funny in 1714. What else is new?

rock carvings?

 

[Jokodo]

Interestingly, after that 1714 letter the issue of variolation became a hot topic in the British medical community, with various (second hand) reports of similar practices elsewhere, from a guy in Boston writing in that "his Negro" had answered "both yes and no" when asked whether he had had the pox and describing the same procedure, to another Greek-Italian physician recounting that midwives have been doing it on some Greek islands since time immemorial, an ambassador from Algiers saying they all do it in the Maghreb, and someone digging up a report from India half a century earlier that mentioned variolation in passing; but also considerable opposition from chauvinists who deemed it unthinkable that European medics could learn anything useful from oriental midwives, and puritans who objected against this ungodly interference in God's plan who is to die and when.

In other words, the right was anti-vax before vaccines proper (or the right-left terminology) existed, but in England at least, they lost that particular culture war by the early 1720s. Or so it seemed at the time.

 

[none]

Interestingly, after that 1714 letter the issue of variolation became a hot topic in the British medical community, with various (second hand) reports of similar practices elsewhere, from a guy in Boston writing in that "his Negro" had answered "both yes and no" when asked whether he had had the pox and describing the same procedure, to another Greek-Italian physician recounting that midwives have been doing it on some Greek islands since time immemorial, an ambassador from Algiers saying they all do it in the Maghreb, and someone digging up a report from India half a century earlier that mentioned variolation in passing; but also considerable opposition from chauvinists who deemed it unthinkable that European medics could learn anything useful from oriental midwives, and puritans who objected against this ungodly interference in God's plan who is to die and when.

In other words, the right was anti-vax before vaccines proper (or the right-left terminology) existed, but in England at least, they lost that particular culture war by the early 1720s. Or so it seemed at the time.

British folks talking English, I guess.
reminds me of the theatrical "black" guy with a gun from a Quentin Tarantino move from 1990s??
say what again.
"you" can wear my speedo to the gym.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Dexamethasone

I wouldn't really call this a "treatment". I am not aware of any treatment for Covid, as is typical for viruses the doctors try to keep you alive while your body fights. Dexamethasone is one of those tools, along with pronation, oxygen, ventilators, blood thinners, and probably more than I don't know about.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

engrish?

Note that that's from more than 300 years ago. Languages change over time.

 

[Jokodo]

engrish?

Note that that's from more than 300 years ago. Languages change over time.

The article actually is part English part Latin - the main part is an English summary of Dr. Timonius's letter by a Dr. John Woodward of London, but as an appendix it includes a verbatim (Latin) reproduction of Timunius's `aetiological part` which is actually longer than the main matter: "The rest of Dr. Timones Letter contains his Reasons for this Method or Practice; which being the AEtiological Part, is publish’d in his own Words, as follows.", what follows being Latin. I do find it kind of sad I can't read enough Latin for that part, would be interesting to see how far off the mark they were in those days in their theories about how and why it works! (I bet 300 years from now someone who is not a Chinese native speaker is going to write in Chinese "it would be cool to know enough English to read the actual analyses they made at the time just to check how far off the mark they were, not just the pop-sci summary")

And the English before that is three times closer to Shakespeare than to us in time. It would be crazy if it didn't sound weird.

By the way, the venue of this publication, the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" claim the title of oldest scientific journal in the world, and they're still being published.

 

[Jokodo]

Dexamethasone

I wouldn't really call this a "treatment". I am not aware of any treatment for Covid, as is typical for viruses the doctors try to keep you alive while your body fights. Dexamethasone is one of those tools, along with pronation, oxygen, ventilators, blood thinners, and probably more than I don't know about.

What about Budesonid? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00160-0/fulltext

They seem to claim that it reduces severe cases by 75-90% when administered in the early stages of infection.

 

[ZiprHead]

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in a segment of his show Wednesday night, baselessly linking thousands of deaths to the shot.

"Between late December of 2020, and last month, a total of 3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID vaccines in the United States. Three thousand, three hundred, and sixty-two — that's an average of 30 people every day," Carlson said on "Tucker Carlson Tonight." "The actual number is almost certainly much higher than that — perhaps vastly higher."

Experts cautioned even before the COVID-19 vaccine rollout that people would die after taking vaccines for coincidental reasons, especially as the early part of the US vaccine rollout focused on older people and those with preexisting conditions.

There's no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines have caused anywhere near the number of deaths cited by Carlson.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-attacked-covid-19-vaccine-again-on-show-2021-5

Carlson later tried to bullshit out of what he did by claiming he was just criticising the VAERS system.

Learn the Risk, an anti-vaccine group, recently published a post on Facebook with a list of people who died after receiving COVID-19 vaccines.

"AGE 25. MALE. Vaccinated 12/22/2020. Found unresponsive and subsequently expired at home on 1/11/2021. Moderna vaccine," reads the first of almost 30 entries featured in the Feb. 9 post.

These entries are copied from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, a national vaccine safety surveillance program set up by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration that records health issues that arise after vaccinations in the U.S.

We rate this statement Mostly False.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/feb/16/facebook-posts/says-death-reports-federal-database-show-fatal-ris/

This man is dangerous and needs to be removed from his influential position.

 

[crazyfingers]

https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-attacked-covid-19-vaccine-again-on-show-2021-5

Carlson later tried to bullshit out of what he did by claiming he was just criticising the VAERS system.

We rate this statement Mostly False.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/feb/16/facebook-posts/says-death-reports-federal-database-show-fatal-ris/

This man is dangerous and needs to be removed from his influential position.

Pfizer and Maderna could start a defamation lawsuit. To date that appears the only way to get people to stop lying.

 

[repoman]

Adenovirus-induced thrombocytopenia: the role of von Willebrand factor and P-selectin in mediating accelerated platelet clearance (This is from 2006)

https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/109/7/2832/125650/Adenovirus-induced-thrombocytopenia-the-role-of

Is the accidental injection of the J&J and AstraZeneca into blood vessels instead of msucle a reason the VERY RARE side effects like this?

Can aspirating the needle to check for blood make this side effect vanishingly rare?

This is from Denmark and is Google-translated

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=da&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fdsr.dk%2Fpolitik-og-nyheder%2Fnyhed%2Fcovid-19-vacciner-skal-gives-med-aspiration-foer-injektion

Covid-19 vaccines should be given with aspiration before injectionBased on a precautionary principle, the Statens Serum Institut has now announced that aspiration is recommended for all approved covid-19 vaccines. It is otherwise a practice not followed in the general guidelines, and it has created confusion.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Dexamethasone

I wouldn't really call this a "treatment". I am not aware of any treatment for Covid, as is typical for viruses the doctors try to keep you alive while your body fights. Dexamethasone is one of those tools, along with pronation, oxygen, ventilators, blood thinners, and probably more than I don't know about.

What about Budesonid? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00160-0/fulltext

They seem to claim that it reduces severe cases by 75-90% when administered in the early stages of infection.

It's still a steroid--calming down the immune system going haywire, not actually fighting the virus.

 

[repoman]

What about Budesonid? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00160-0/fulltext

They seem to claim that it reduces severe cases by 75-90% when administered in the early stages of infection.

It's still a steroid--calming down the immune system going haywire, not actually fighting the virus.

And?

Holy Christ, yeah that is great that is helping the body not get more damaged.

What the fuck do you want by looking this gift horse in the mouth?

 

[crazyfingers]

I posted this in the Problems Involving Parents thread but I think it is useful here also.

COVID-19 risks reemerge at nursing homes as workers decline vaccine and new residents struggle to get shots
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05...ine-vaccine-new-residents-struggle-get-shots/

I don't know if this is behind a paywall or not. Copying as much as I dare. I sent this to the director of my mom's Memory care facility asking if they truly enforced mandatory vaccinations among employees and what they are doing to make sure that new staff and new residents are vaccinated.

But now, just two months after the ambitious nursing home vaccination program wrapped up, there are worrisome signs that the danger remains and may even be growing again. The percentage of nursing home residents who are vaccinated has declined since March, amid complaints from senior care leaders of difficulty getting shots for newly admitted residents.

Perhaps more concerning, a sizable share of Massachusetts nursing home staff continue to go unvaccinated for COVID-19, despite aggressive initiatives to convince the hesitant. Just 59 percent of nursing home staff are fully vaccinated, according to state data. Now, nursing home leaders who witnessed the explosion of COVID infections and deaths a year ago are wary that their own nurses, aides, and other employees could risk the health of their residents.

“It’s a topic of conversation among every provider,” said Elissa Sherman, president of LeadingAge, a trade association that represents nonprofit nursing homes and assisted-living centers. “We have to do whatever we can to try to get as many vaccinated as possible.”

One of the largest senior care operators in the state, Hebrew SeniorLife, has already said its 1,125 nursing home staffers must get vaccinated, but has stopped short of enforcing the mandate. Others, fearing they’ll have difficulty filling positions, have so far relied on a softer approach.

Underscoring the anxiety is news of a recent deadly cluster in Kentucky. An unvaccinated employee ignited a COVID-19 outbreak at a nursing home where most residents — but only about half the staff — had been vaccinated. In all, 26 residents were infected, including 18 who had been vaccinated, and 20 workers were infected, including four who had been vaccinated, according to a review by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three residents died, including two who were unvaccinated.

The significant number of infections among vaccinated residents underscores the special risk of these homes, with their close quarters and largely indoor life and the often weakened immune systems of the residents. Nationally, less than 0.01 percent of people who have been vaccinated have been infected with the coronavirus, according to CDC data.

In Massachusetts, state data show total nursing home COVID-19 cases have plummeted from several hundred a week in late January to roughly 30 a week recently. But senior leaders know that number can spike quickly if clusters of cases break out.

A much-heralded federal program sent pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens into nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities nationwide from late December through early March to administer vaccines to staff and residents. When it concluded, 84 percent of Massachusetts nursing home residents at that time were fully vaccinated, state data show.

But since then, as residents were discharged or died and others who are unvaccinated entered care, that figure has declined. Today, roughly 81 percent of nursing home residents in Massachusetts are fully vaccinated, the data show.

“It seems they are creating a new type of petri dish where we could have a resurgence if we don’t get a [vaccination] program consistently implemented,” said Daryl Cameron Every, a Milton elder law attorney who is encountering different COVID vaccination policies as she helps seniors transitioning between and among hospitals, geriatric psychiatric facilities, and nursing homes.

She recently battled a geriatric psychiatric facility, which said it was not responsible for obtaining a shot for a 70-year-old client with dementia and delusions who had been there for months. In late March, when the man was poised to be discharged to an Ayer nursing home, administrators there said they didn’t have the necessary refrigeration to handle vaccines themselves and were awaiting guidance from the state, Every said.

Her client was finally admitted to the nursing home April 21 -- still unvaccinated -- and had been in quarantine awaiting a vaccination, which finally came Thursday, with a one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot.

“It was kind of like banging your head against a wall,” said Julie Curcuru, the man’s daughter, about the months-long mission to get her father vaccinated. She said the nursing home initially offered to transport him outside the facility to get a shot, but the family nixed that because he became severely disoriented and agitated during an earlier move, thinking he was in an airport.

“I am still just unbelieving that this population can be overlooked,” Curcuru said. “I guess we can learn from this and get better before another pandemic.”

The Baker administration says it helps nursing homes by sending “rapid response teams” to facilities where residents have lower vaccination rates.

But the state’s process for getting shots to patients entering nursing homes leaves some waiting weeks in quarantine, unable to participate in group activities or eat in common dining areas, said Dr. Asif Merchant, medical director at four nursing homes in the Metro West area and partner of a company that runs medical services for 45 nursing homes in Massachusetts.

“It means that a person cannot have visitors in their room,” said Merchant, who has been lobbying for more state help for beleaguered facilities and families.

The problem, say nursing home administrators, is that the state’s response teams typically just provide a second dose of Pfizer vaccine to residents who already had their first Pfizer shot somewhere else. Few nursing home pharmacies have the cold storage capacity to store the Pfizer vaccine.

But for nursing homes with residents needing a first dose of Pfizer, or any dose of the other vaccines, administrators and families have been largely on their own. The state in late February directed nursing home administrators to contact their own long-term-care pharmacies to provide the shots. It also told administrators to direct their unvaccinated staff — many still hesitant to get a shot — to mass vaccination sites or other locations, rather than allow them to get a shot at their workplace.

The end result has been some new nursing home residents statewide remain unvaccinated, leaving them quarantined and vulnerable.

Meanwhile, many of the people taking care of them are not getting vaccinated either.

Recognizing the problem, the state last month permitted nursing homes to vaccinate staff right at the facility.

 

[untermensche]

Dexamethasone

I wouldn't really call this a "treatment". I am not aware of any treatment for Covid, as is typical for viruses the doctors try to keep you alive while your body fights. Dexamethasone is one of those tools, along with pronation, oxygen, ventilators, blood thinners, and probably more than I don't know about.

It is a common treatment.

Keeping you alive is done with treatments.

Oxygen keeps you alive.

That is kind of important in the treatment of COVID.

Anti-nausea medications many times have to be used during chemotherapy.

They are part of the treatment for cancer.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What about Budesonid? https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00160-0/fulltext

They seem to claim that it reduces severe cases by 75-90% when administered in the early stages of infection.

It's still a steroid--calming down the immune system going haywire, not actually fighting the virus.

And?

Holy Christ, yeah that is great that is helping the body not get more damaged.

What the fuck do you want by looking this gift horse in the mouth?

The point is that it's about helping the body survive the infection, it does absolutely nothing to the virus.

 

[Jokodo]

And?

Holy Christ, yeah that is great that is helping the body not get more damaged.

What the fuck do you want by looking this gift horse in the mouth?

The point is that it's about helping the body survive the infection, it does absolutely nothing to the virus.

When I look up dictionary definitions of 'treatment', I find something along the lines of "medical care given to a patient for an illness or injury." I do not find "process to kill or deactivate pathogens."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And?

Holy Christ, yeah that is great that is helping the body not get more damaged.

What the fuck do you want by looking this gift horse in the mouth?

The point is that it's about helping the body survive the infection, it does absolutely nothing to the virus.

When I look up dictionary definitions of 'treatment', I find something along the lines of "medical care given to a patient for an illness or injury." I do not find "process to kill or deactivate pathogens."

True, but the distinction was being made between things which actually help with the problem vs things which simply support but don't address the actual issue.

 

[none]

LP, meh.. china virus?

 

[Jokodo]

When I look up dictionary definitions of 'treatment', I find something along the lines of "medical care given to a patient for an illness or injury." I do not find "process to kill or deactivate pathogens."

True, but the distinction was being made between things which actually help with the problem vs things which simply support but don't address the actual issue.

The actual issue is that the virus makes people severely ill and sometimes kills them. The actual issue is not that there is a virus in the body - the average person probably has several virus strands inside their body at any one time. If you avoid people getting very sick (or transmitting it to others who then get very sick), you've addressed the actual issue.

 

[ZiprHead]

Anti-Maskers Ready to Start Masking—to Protect Themselves From the Vaccinated
An anti-vaccine conspiracy about the vaccinated are leading some anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers to contemplate wearing a mask and social distance.

A conspiracy ripping through the anti-vax world may finally drive some anti-maskers to do the unthinkable: wear a mask and keep their distance.

The conspiracy—which comes in several shapes and sizes—more or less says the vaccinated will “shed” certain proteins onto the unvaccinated who will then suffer adverse effects. The main worry is the “shedding” will cause irregular menstruation, infertility, and miscarriages. The entirely baseless idea is a key cog in a larger conspiracy that COVID-19 was a ploy to depopulate the world, and the vaccine is what will cull the masses.

Experts say the conspiracy is born from a fundamental misunderstanding of how vaccines work. It has been widely debunked and you can read about it here, here, and here, among other places.